The feeling does not present itself immediately. No, it works in a different manner; it manifests itself gradually, from a few morsels of disgruntlement into a full-fledged main dish of a sensation. It’s usually accompanied by a healthy dose of denial too, one which makes it very difficult to actually realize what it is that you’re feeling. You feel sad, about something someone does, and you find that you were expecting more of them. Expecting them to do something that, for all intents and purposes, you thought they were capable of doing. So you feel sad for a while, and then you move on. Then it happens again, and the sadness re-emerges, perhaps this time with a nice little side-dish of anger. But then it fades away. The cycle repeats, again and again, until at some arbitrary point, you realize that you’re not feeling any of those things, but in fact you’re feeling something deeper and much more unfortunate. You’re disappointed in them, and — even worse — in yourself for having been led down that merry path of sadness and unfulfillment. That really is the worst thing about it, right? That you felt the desire to lie to yourself, and you knew you were, but you just kept on doing it, because the alternative felt so much worse. We resist disappointment with such vehemence because we don’t want to let go of the hope that there could be more. We resist it because otherwise we have to accept that people are fallible, that they won’t live up to our expectations, that they won’t always keep their promises. We resist it because it introduces an element of uncertainty into one’s mind; you always have to temper your future expectations with the possibility of them not being met, for fear of being disappointed yet again.
Tag: Thoughts
A Matter Of Perspective
Break-ups suck. It’s a universal truth that everyone accepts as gospel at this point. It doesn’t matter if it was painless, if you and your ex are still on speaking terms and are very friendly with one another (please note that there’s probably around three people in your life who mutter a ‘fuck you’ internally whenever you relate that fact to them) – regardless of the circumstances, the actual act of ending a relationship is not a fun process; the shearing of that particular sort of connection, the realignment of your thoughts towards a person, the loss of the closeness and intimacy you might have acquired during your time together.. it’s something that takes time for a person to process and get through, and even then, you’re not entirely in the clear. Some of that stuff stays with you for years. Maybe forever.
Sounds like a lot of fun, no? Kind of makes you wonder why we put ourselves through that whole ringer, over and over. Something about the fact that the waves of our hopes and dreams just keep crashing against the rocks of that particular inaccessible island seems a little…unwise, perhaps.
But what can we really do? I mean, of course there are people among us for whom the idea of perpetual singledom is something they wholeheartedly welcome and enjoy (and believe me, I’ve tried my hand at that so many times. It’s hard. The people who manage to do this are wizards, in my opinion) but beyond the adjustment of perspective that allows one to appreciate the times when you’re single, alone and by yourself, the deeply natural desire of wanting to be around someone and to share parts of your life with them remains a strong, almost pulsating thing in the back of one’s mind that pushes you to keep trying to satisfy it. It sounds a little insidious when I paint it that way, but come on, how many times have you cursed yourself for being back in that same loop where you keep waiting for a text that takes a little too long to come along, only to feel entirely dumb when it does and you realize that your crush was just talking on the goddamn phone. It’s deeply silly and entirely human (perhaps the reason it’s silly IS that it’s human, honestly).
So we can probably agree that we’ll keep trying (or hoping) to meet that special person someday, and that we’ll go through a breakup (or a dozen) in our attempt to do so, and that it’ll hurt like a motherfucker almost every time. Right? Well, not to get all relationship advice-y on you – and that ship might have sailed already – but I’ve found that there’s something that helps me look back at these experiences with a feeling that’s not just a mixture of sadness and bitterness.
Fact is, regardless of how things ended, the experiences you went through changed your life in some way. That’s usually what I stop to investigate for a little while, and the things I discover often do astound me. Sure, sometimes the impact is minimal, but it’s balanced out by the times when someone allows you to change your whole outlook on what you want out of a relationship, and what you’re able to compromise on vs what’s gonna be a hard pass for you. But even beyond that, sometimes I think of what I’ve learned from prior exes, or the small ways they’ve enriched my life, and it’s often a thing that makes me smile. Yes, they may no longer be with you, but there’s a part of you that’s forever changed because of them – and hopefully that’s a thought that introduces a bit of gentle warmth into your heart.
For fun, let’s see some of the ways things have changed for me. My first long-term relationship left me with a deep appreciation for better kinds of tea (seriously, how I managed to just drink Lipton for almost 26 years at that point is beyond me), and introduced me to the marvels of sriracha, a thing I never knew existed but cannot live without at this point. Others have allowed me to question my place in the world, and what I want for myself. They made me think about international politics, and how deeply I ought to engage with that in comparison to more local affairs. They made me work a little harder, study a little more, just to live up to their example. They’ve made me care about good design, and introduced me to so…much…music that I’d have never found on my own (this comes with the caveat that sometimes that music reminds me of them, but..you know). And, on a slighter but hardly more minor level, they allowed me to finally get around to watching shows that I should’ve been checking out many years ago.
So it’s not really an exaggeration to say that those people have been instrumental in making me who I am today, and while there are aspects of me that I’d like to change, there remain parts I like a lot that can be traced directly to the influence of those people. I couldn’t be grateful enough for the time they spent in my life, and I can only hope that they could one day look at me with equal kindness. I hope we all can.
Anyway, give it a go sometime, yeah? I promise, you won’t be disappointed.
Be Good
What is it that we desire to see in ourselves, years after all the effort we exert to become better people, or at least, people more well aware of their shortcomings, and thus more capable of navigating them with minimal damage to those around them? Do we look at our parents and think, this is where they went wrong, and I’ll never be like them, but we only end up being faulty people in other ways that we’ve failed to anticipate? or do we look at those who we think are better, and somehow try to discern their road to improvement, only to find ourselves on a different road entirely? Who can truly tell? It does seem like there’s no one way, or some others may say that there’s no road at all.
Is it that life has never been easy, or is it that we make life more difficult for ourselves? The answer probably is that there’s an element of truth to each of those ideas. Every day a new door to awareness opens, and with it questions and anxieties that come cascading down the waterfall of our thoughts, and with age the boulders just become bigger and much less avoidable. But I also reject the idea that being a good person is somehow a challenge, or an exercise in difficulty, I refuse to think that decency is some sort of test that most people fail somehow.
People love to point to the concept that if there was no oversight, everyone would revel in mischief, and those who wouldn’t would become sheep amongst wolves, destined for consumption. And perhaps examples in everyday life do corroborate that idea; witnessing corruption take over entire establishments and countries, and people following suit. How can you not think that we are inherently awful?
But I would say that said awfulness is not inherent, but indeed learned through years of cruelty and laissez-faire attitudes that warp people’s minds into thinking that it is an eat-or-be-eaten world out there. It is not difficult to be decent, but it is equally easy to teach a child that taking things by force is the only right road, that women are inferior, that you always have the right of way, regardless of what you’re doing. When you live in a cruel uncaring world, reflecting that cruelty back at the world becomes a means of survival, without any consideration of what lies beyond that cruelty. Had there been an inkling of a desire for introspection, I do not doubt that one might realize that they wish to be decent, or at least not as cruel as the world made them to be. They just never get to choose.
Choice is indeed a luxury, and maybe what we ought to do is try to give everyone the choice we possess. What comes out of that might be a surprise, to us and — more importantly — to them.
Memento
Sometimes there are these memories, tiny in duration, but colossal in effect, that come into one’s mind. They are unbidden, and often unwelcome, but suddenly they’re there, and all you can do is just deal with them.
Maybe it’s something as simple as the way the wind feels on your skin, or the way the light hits the steering wheel of your car as the sun sets and you’re driving home. Maybe it’s the sound of a notification on someone else’s phone, that reminds you of a time when you used that same tone, a long time ago.
Isn’t it weird, though? How our brain tends to associate these seemingly very simple things with people and events? And what’s more frustrating is the fact that, no matter how hard you try, you’ll never be able to share that feeling with someone else. After all, the Pensieve only exists in Harry Potter books. So for others, these memories are just related through words and images, but they’re never the same thing. How can you relate a memory of warmth to someone who’s never experienced it the same way? Or the feeling of someone’s skin against your fingertips? It’s never exact, only relayed via a noisy medium, with losses along the way. The most unfortunate game of telephone there is.
And even if you could, how would you ever tell them how it feels to remember those things? Would you tell them that they rend your heart asunder? That they make you sigh so heatedly, you’d think that the flames in your chest are still there — even when you know that all that’s left are embers and ashes?
You can’t, but you’ll keep trying.
Because the memory is worth it.
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